Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Iwoke slowly, floating somewhere in that twilight between sleep and wakefulness.
Soft pillows cradled my head and shoulders atop a mattress that felt impossibly comfortable. For a moment, I let myself sink into it as light pressed too brightly through my eyelids, keeping them closed, not ready to face whatever waited on the other side.
A dry, chemical bitterness coated my tongue as my limbs refused to answer right away, heavy and distant.
Sedative—the word surfaced, uninvited.
Whatever it was, it had seeped deep into my muscles and was only now working its way out.
I stayed still, breathing, letting the fog clear on its own terms.
Then reality began coming back in pieces—disjointed flashes that slammed into my mind.
The safe house that was anything but safe.
The door blowing inward.
The masked man charging in.
My father yelling.
Then a loud bang and a face—
gone.
Obliterated. Brain matter sprayed across the wall, across me, across everything. Worse than a nightmare, because it was something I could never unsee.
A burst of pain stabbed at my brain. I tried to shake it away, but the next image flashed to the surface.
My father flying backward through the air, his body hitting the floor. Lucian standing there, gun raised, eyes flat and merciless.
He’d given no warning.
Hadn’t hesitated.
He murdered my father without a word.
Betrayal burned hot and immediate, curling in my chest, but it didn’t land cleanly. Not the way it should have. There was no neat place for my anger to sit.
Because my father’s voice followed right behind the image.
I allowed you to leave the convent.
I gave you a king’s ransom every month.
My stomach twisted.
Allowed.
Paid.
He’d said it as though it were a settled fact, like he’d done his duty. As if whatever hell I’d lived through was a choice I’d made with his blessing.
But no money had ever come my way.
Not once.
There’d been no rescue.
No phone calls returned.
Almost two years of silence.
Which meant—
The thought snapped into place so suddenly that my head pulsed.
The convent had taken the money. While I slept in borrowed rooms, selling pieces of myself just to eat.
They knew.
They had to.
They knew how I was surviving.
And they took the money and let me suffer.
My fingers twisted in the sheets beneath them.
The priests.
The nuns.
The people who preached obedience and sacrifice. The ones who talked about purity and suffering and God’s will. They had watched me sell my body and kept cashing the checks.
Had they known about the auction?
About Lola?
About what she’d done to me?
My head pounded harder, each question stacking on top of the next.
Had my father known?
Had he been so corrupt that he didn’t care what it cost me, as long as I stayed quiet and useful?
Or had he been so incompetent as a father, so blinded by ambition, that he’d trusted the same people who broke me and never bothered to look closer?
Either way, the answer turned my stomach.
The world tilted; right and wrong slipped out of alignment.
Up was down.
Right was wrong.
Everything I’d been taught about goodness and authority collapsed in on itself.
My father.
The church.
Every institution that claimed righteousness had failed me. Sold me. Turned a blind eye as I suffered.
I wanted to sink back into the darkness of unconsciousness.
Let it take me. Let the quiet swallow everything until nothing could touch me again.
But I couldn’t.
Whatever drug he’d given me was loosening its grip, and with it came the certainty that staying asleep wouldn’t keep me safe. I had to open my eyes. I had to know where I was—and what kind of trouble I’d woken up in.
I yawned despite myself, my body stretching on instinct, a low groan slipping out as my muscles protested. Everything felt heavy but unhurt. I peeled my eyes open slowly and light flooded in.
And there—framed against the window—stood a familiar silhouette.
My Shadowman.
Immaculately dressed, of course, in dark trousers and a jacket. His broad shoulders blocked half the daylight. He looked carved out of stone, massive and immovable.
The giant who’d promised to keep me safe.
Panic clawed up my spine.
Madrid.
Am I back already?
My heart kicked hard as I scanned the hotel room—beautiful, expensive, clean.. Not the convent. Not a cell.
I sucked in a ragged breath.
Lucian turned, his gaze locked onto mine—and then softened.
“Ah,” he said quietly, crossing the room at an unhurried pace. “There you are, my little bird. I was gettin’ worried.”
His voice was calm.
“You’ve had a long sleep.”
I pushed myself upright too fast.
The room pitched sideways, my head swimming, and I groaned as nausea surged. My fingers dug into the mattress, blinking hard until the spin eased.
Then I realized I was naked and yanked the sheet up to my chest.
“Oh my God,” I snapped. “Of course I’m naked. Why do I always wake up naked and dazed around you?”
Lucian stopped dead.
His jaw flexed once.
Then his hands lifted—palms open, the way a man does when he knows the woman in front of him is one wrong move from bolting.
He stepped to the side of the bed and leaned in, bracing his fists on the mattress on either side of my legs, anchoring himself there. His face was inches from mine.
“I took your clothes off because I didn’t think you’d want to wake up covered in someone’s day-old brain matter,” he said evenly. “You were unconscious, and I did what needed to be done.”
My stomach lurched.
“Sure,” I huffed, tightening my grip on the sheet. “Do you get some sick jollies out of it? Staring at women when they can’t fight back? You think you can manhandle whoever you want and call it protection?”
“I didn’t touch you,” he said. “Not like that. And I don’t control you.”
“The hell you don’t,” I shot back. “You dragged me onto a plane. You drugged me. You’re the monster who killed my father.”
The word monster tasted bitter—and wrong—but I hurled it anyway.
“Stay away from me.”
Silence stretched between us.
Lucian exhaled slowly.
“You’re safe,” he said. “You’re in a hotel near Barajas. We landed about twelve hours ago.”
I shook my head hard.
“No,” I said. “Don’t do that. Don’t tell me I’m safe like you didn’t just rip my life apart.”
His eyes held mine. Unflinching.
“Let’s get somethin’ straight. I shot your father because he pulled a gun on you,” he explained patiently, the furrow between his eyes deepening. “And because he planned to give you to men who would’ve done worse. I saved your life.”
I shook my head. “No—”
“That man you call father,” he went on, his voice chilling, “had already sold you. You were a political favor. A debt. If I hadn’t taken you when I did, you’d already be on a plane to El Salvador. Just another body for Delgado to use.”
The words punched the air out of my lungs.
“No,” I gasped. “That’s not—he wouldn’t—”
Lucian didn’t raise his voice.
“I saw the contract,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes squeezing shut, as if he were forcing himself to finish. “With my own eyes. Like everything else in Andrew Hayes’s world, you were either an asset—or a liability.”
Something cracked inside me.
I covered my mouth with my hand, trembling and blinking up at him as the room tilted.
“No,” I whispered. “That can’t be true. He made me his perfect saint. Since I was fourteen. He was proud of me. He had no idea what my life had become. He would never—”
A memory slammed into me.
My father’s voice at the safe house.
I’m shipping you somewhere you won’t escape so easily.
My chest seized.
“No,” I whispered.
Lucian straightened slightly.
“Oh, yes,” he said quietly.
The room spun.
My mind jumped to the girls who had vanished from the monastery.
The documents I’d hidden.
Could the man I called father be capable of something this depraved?
That sick?
I shook my head, staring at nothing.
“Before my mother died,” I murmured, mostly to myself, “he was a good man. He sent me to Spain to heal. To keep me safe because he’d just been elected mayor.”
My voice broke.
“But he lied about how she died,” I mumbled on, the words tumbling out. “Covered for the builder. Took their big money donations and abandoned me when I needed him most. Only saw me when—when I could be useful.”
The world collapsed.
Tears spilled down my cheeks unchecked as I dropped my hands to my lap, my chest caving in on itself.
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”
Lucian cradled my face, forcing me to look at him.
“I know,” he said, and his voice softened in a way that undid me. “You have every right to be confused. To question me. To hate me. I can take it.”
His thumbs brushed beneath my eyes.
“But I’ll earn your trust,” he continued quietly.
“However long it takes. Because what was done to you doesn’t define your future.
You survived what was never meant to be survived—and kept breathin’ anyway.
You deserve so much better. I see your invisible scars.
And whatever it takes for you to heal, I’m here for you. ”
I knocked his hands away.
“I can’t—” My voice broke.
Lucian stepped back at once, giving me space.
The sheet twisted around me as I scrambled out of bed.
Needing space to get my panic under control, I bolted for the bathroom, slammed the door shut, and locked it.
I turned the shower handle, dropped the sheet, and stepped inside, not caring if the water had heated. I wanted to wash away the last eight years of my life.
Everything was a lie.
My life.
My faith.
My father.
I slid down the wall as the shower roared to life, steam filling the room, the water scalding my skin, and I sobbed.
For my mother.
For my innocence.
For the man I thought my father was.
For the girl I’d been before the world taught me how cruel it could be.
How could there be a God?
I wanted to believe. I needed to believe. But when the holy were the abusers, when the righteous sold their children, when the system protected predators—what kind of God allowed that?
The devil outside that door had never lied to me.
He was the type of man I should fear, should hate—but I couldn’t.
He never pretended to be anything he wasn’t.
Never justified himself.
He revealed his true nature through his actions, not his words.
The realization clawed at my heart.
He’d dragged me out of The Black Ledger because he noticed I didn’t want to perform; he’d caught it when I cringed. He’d spotted my fake orgasm when no one else cared whether I felt anything at all.
He was the man who gave me pleasure without asking for anything in return. Who put me to bed instead of taking more than I could offer. Who held me when I screamed, fought, and shattered on the plane. Who stayed even though I screamed, I hate you.
He had seen my scars and was still here.
And in return, all I’d done was bring chaos into his life.
I curled in on myself on the tile, knees to my chest, shaking despite the heat, as my world turned upside down.
Nothing made sense anymore.
Except this:
The monster wasn’t my enemy.